Violent offenses, property crimes hit 30-year low

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San Diego  County crime rates for 2010 hit lows not seen in the 30 years the San Diego Association of Governments has been keeping detailed records for the region.

A SANDAG report released Thursday shows one in every 48 residents in San Diego County was a victim of a burglary, larceny or car theft in 2010, while 11,641 violent crimes — homicides, rapes, robberies and aggravated assaults — occurred.

Despite worries that the recession that began in 2007 would cause a spike in property crimes, the report found that over the past five years burglaries were down 21 percent and larceny thefts down 20 percent in the region’s 18 cities and the county’s unincorporated areas.

SANDAG officials attributed the declines to several factors, including the passage of laws that mandate increased jail and prison time for violent offenders, the region’s use of task forces that combine the resources of local, state and federal agencies to target specific problems, and other crime prevention programs.

Sheriff Bill Gore said the expanded use of DNA technology, in particular, has helped investigators make arrests in cases that would have gone unsolved in the past.

“Probably one of the biggest contributors in my mind was Proposition 69 that passed in 2004. It allowed sheriffs around the state to start taking DNA from people arrested for certain felonies and that’s (been expanded) now for all felonies,” Gore said.

California’s database of known DNA has grown to more than 1.7 million samples, making it the third-largest in the world.

The sheriff pointed to the recent arrest of a suspect in the state Route 163 shootings as an example of how DNA matching can help locate suspects.

California Highway Patrol investigators said DNA evidence on shell casings linked a 58-year-old transient to the April 5 freeway shooting. The shooting left one driver with a punctured lung and liver. The man’s DNA had been submitted to the state’s database after he was convicted in a case involving throwing rocks at a car on the freeway.

“What we are doing is getting DNA from crime scenes and property-crime cases, stolen cars and residential burglaries — a cigarette butt, a Coke can, a shell casing,” Gore said.

By running that evidence through the database, he said, burglars who might get away with 15 or 20 crimes are now being caught early in their spree.

“We’re getting them on the second or third burglary, not the 15th or 20th,” Gore said.

SANDAG’s 30-year figures show that reported violent crimes such as robberies, rapes and homicides reached a peak in 1992, when 9.76 crimes per 1,000 residents were reported. The rate fell in 2010 to 3.61 per 1,000 residents, a 10 percent decrease from a year ago and the lowest rate in the past 30 years.

Not every category had decreases, however.

• The number of bank heists in the county jumped by 73 percent between 2009 and 2010, increasing from 92 to 159. Several high-profile serial robberies occurred in that time frame, including at least a dozen attributed to a robber dubbed the Geezer Bandit, who is still being sought.